


Heart to Hearts and Shitty Couches

by urisarang



Series: Broskis [2]
Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Comfort, Developing Friendships, Dreams and Nightmares, Feels, Friendship or budding love, Gen, Heart-to-Heart, I Ship It, Late Night Conversations, Opening Up, Rated M for language, better safe than sorry, take your pick
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-16
Updated: 2019-07-16
Packaged: 2020-06-29 10:57:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,339
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19828738
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/urisarang/pseuds/urisarang
Summary: When everything is said and done, Murray and Alexei have only known each other two days.  Sure they have that shared trauma thing Murray likes to talk about but if they are going to be living together they need to get to know one another.Good thing neither of them have anything better to do that first night then talk the night away.





	Heart to Hearts and Shitty Couches

**Author's Note:**

> These two won't let me sleep so guess I'll make a series?

Going from living in a 6 by 8 concrete cell for a month to sharing a house with a man he's barely known all of two days has been a bit of a system shock. Even before he was rescued/kidnapped from his former comrades he had slept in an underground bunker. Do you think the great USSR had gifted their lead scientist/engineer his own room? 

If you thought that you have been sorely mislead by propaganda. Alexei, along with all the other 'A Team' scientists, bunked together in a barracks on cots. Their only amenity was the illusion of privacy with hospital-esque draw curtains around their bunks.

The former soviet went from that to being gifted the guest room - no, not the guest room - HIS room, according to Murray. It just wasn't something Alexei thought he'd get again. 

His friend, who lives out in the middle of no where with security measures unlike anything a private citizen should have is a man who values his privacy to an insane degree. The fact that he is willing, no, happy to have Alexei stay with him for an untold length of time? It means something.

Alexei was almost too afraid to ask that first night, but the not knowing would eat him up so he asked.

"Why go through this trouble for me? The government will know everything you do while I am here." Murray stares at him for a moment before answering.

"I made you a promise didn't I?"

"You did, but this? Opening your home to s-someone like me? Losing your privacy? That's more than anyone could ask for, you don't owe me this."

"You're right. I don't owe you anything." Alexei stills himself for the fallout of having talked the one man willing to help him, out of helping him. "But, I don't abandon my friends." 

Alexei looks up in surprise, the beginning of a smile curling his lips. He had felt a kinship with the conspiracy theorist within the first 10 minutes of meeting him, and it had seemed as if the man felt the same but he was never sure. 

Until now. Hearing the other man call him friend loosens a tangle of worry in his chest that he hadn't known was there until he felt it fall away.

"It might surprise you but I don't have many friends. Just Jim really. Well, some of the weirdos he's brought into my life aren't too horrible I guess. That Joyce is a real spitfire though." Murray says with sarcastic smile twisting his lips before blinking a couple of times as his face grows more serious.

"I don't got many friends, so the ones I do have? I make sure I keep them. Real hard to find assholes crazy enough to storm a secret Russian base with nothing but a plan made of shoe string and hope. Besides, who better to show you America, the real America! Than someone who isn't fooled by all the propaganda?"

After that Alexei doesn't question his friend's motives. After all, its not like the former soviet has had many real friendships in his life, too busy with school and his projects to go out and make friends growing up. After college was even worse as he was gifted and 'on track for greatness'. 

It was inevitable that he would be approached by government agents looking to recruit him. One of the few true things in the state propaganda was how they were leading the world in science. It was not like in America where they had no real focus, choosing to advance research in all manor of things.- the soviet's used their scientist for one thing and one thing alone.

Their military power. Promising young men and women were scouted and snatched up all across the USSR. The more promising you were, the deeper they buried you in military projects.

Alexei was the top of his class in theoretical physics, engineering, and mathematics. A triple threat as they say, and so he was whisked away with promises of greatness before even stepping foot off campus after graduation.

A new exciting field - ground breaking they said. The sort of thing that could change the world. Well, they weren't wrong, even if it turned out very different from how they expected. 

He quickly jumped ranks when he was introduced to the project. Higher and higher he went until he was second only to Dr. Chazov, the kindhearted head scientist of the project. Alexei looked up to the man, his ground breaking theories were out of this world.

His mentor/student relationship with Dr. Chazov was probably the closest thing he had to a friend growing up in Soviet Russia. The younger man was almost certain the older man did not feel the same way about him. He probably looked at Alexei as a promising young up and comer to mold into greatness, or a nice enough coworker to bullshit with at work - but not the kind of person he'd chose to spend time with outside of that. 

Not that they ever had time outside of work mind you.

Alexei has always felt different, apart from those who should have been his peers. He never fit in, never even bothered trying after being bullied for talking too much about 'nerdy shit' as a child. He centered his life around his science, around his projects. 

He told himself that's all he really needed. He told himself he was happy, and for a while? He really thought he was.

Until he met Murray.

Alexei was scared and talking tough in effort to push away his fear when the crazy haired man answered his door with a big double barrel shot gun. It is crazy to think that somehow, despite all reason, they quickly grew friendly with one another. It was just so easy with the other man, he didn't even have to try. It came naturally for the first time in his life. He just clicked with another person like they were two fitting puzzle pieces. 

It was then when the engineer realized what he had been missing his whole life. How hollow his life was before, how lonely.

Alexei and Murray spend long hours of the first night together on the couch while Alexei tells him about growing up in the USSR, being a loner, and how he's scared shitless of his future here. . .but that with Murray beside him, he feels just that much better and is hopeful for once in his life.

Murray listens attentively, asking questions when he doesn't understand something but his tone is always supportive. Its not easy spilling your guts telling your life story, but Murray makes sure his friend knows he isn't alone.

When Alexei finishes Murray speaks up about his own childhood. How Hopper was his first and only real friend - and that it wasn't even by choice!

Murray jokes that he's no triple threat like Alexei, but has always had a good head for patterns and language, and it just so happened that young Jim Hopper was failing English in jr high. Their teacher paired them up for everything, assigned Murray to tutor Jim so that he could catch up.

He hated Jim, resented the popular kid for wasting his time, and Jim wasn't too keen on him either. Murray was always a weird kid, big surprise no? Murray jokes with a grin as he regales the Russian on his couch with the tale how they managed to become friends despite it. Slowly their animosity towards one another dropped off as they spent time together. 

They walked the line of not being friends but not hating each other our right for some time until Jim caught Murray on the wrong side of some bullying. Not unlike Alexei was, that day it went past simpleminded insults and as one of the kids had his fist raised ready to pummel the weirdo into paste in comes Jim charging like a big hairy bear. 

The kid hit with the tackle? He didn't wake up for a few hours and couldn't even remember what happened to him that day. The big brute had knocked him even more stupid than he already was. 

He then told all the other kids to fuck off and that they weren't half as smart as Murray and were just jealous. He was stunned by Jim's actions, no one had ever stood up for him before. He would have bet his lunch money that Jim would have joined in if you had asked him the day before.

After that he stopped judging people at face value, sure the guy was already a monster of a man in jr. high, but deep down he was a total softy. A big angry cuddly teddy bear Murray describes with a wink. 

Alexei laughs at the surprisingly accurate imagery. 

On and on they talk all through the night sitting on Murray's ugly bright orange couch. As the night wears on they slowly gravitate towards one another until their shoulders are bumping and thighs just brush. 

It's the safest Alexei has felt in a really long time. 

He knows they are up too late but he dreads getting up to sleep alone in the guest bedroom, too afraid he'll wake back up in his cell. Afraid that this was all a fever dream brought on by desperation. He doesn't say so, but he doesn't have to. That with Murray, who somehow manages to be more observant than Alexei expects. The eccentric has been slowly invading his personal space and not mentioning the time - a kindness that doesn't go unnoticed.

Eventually even Alexei's fear can't keep his eyes from closing after the emotionally draining day he's had. He can tell that longer and longer periods of time are going by each blink. Murray's voice is like a lullaby luring him to sleep as he goes off on a rant about. . .

Something. . .probably. 

Alexei's head is too heavy, he thinks to himself that he will rest it just for a minute. His eyes are already closed when his head droops forward and the melody of Murray's voice stops. 

"Mmmlistening." He mumbles out mustering his energy to raise his head, which he barely succeeds in doing. Too bad his eye lids are made of lead and try as he might, he can't will them open.

"Why don't you lie down?" Murray coaxes him softly. The Russian feels Murray shift against him and stand up. He feels hands tip him off center and guide him down so that he is laying on his side on the couch. 

"Mmm" Alexei hums happily already starting to drift off the moment his head touches the warm cushion. He frowns as the warm hands leave him but then there is the weight of a blanket being draped over him and the frown slides right back off. 

"Don't worry, I'll be here when you wake up." Is the last thing Alexei hears before sleep takes him completely. 

He sleeps deeply for several hours until REM hits him and throws him into a dream. Its been a long time since dreams were kind to the engineer. There is just something decidedly unhealthy about not seeing sunlight for years and falling asleep to the sounds of flickering florescent lights.

Being shot, nearly dying half a dozen times and being held as a possible enemy of the state in hostile country? Cherries on top of a PTSD pie. 

So it is no wonder when a nightmare takes hold, and has him crying out in his sleep. He twists around struggling against an unseen assailant causing him to fall off the couch. Thankfully, the shock of hitting the floor wakes him up.

He sits up blinking at the dimly lit room around him in confusion. Where the hell is he? Panic constricts his throat for a moment before it all comes back to him. 

He's safe, he's not in that hell hole - either hell hole. Instead he's sitting on a tattered rug leaning against a shitty orange couch in Murray's house. There are taped up posters covering the walls and half a dozen TVs along the wall, of which Alexei knows only one works.

This is a place well lived in by an eccentric, and so far off from the places of his nightmares he could kiss the floor in gratitude. The cold, dark places of his nightmares have no power here. Especially not when the Russian notices he's not alone in the room.

Across the room on the _other_ shitty orange couch(because of course Murray would not have one, but two couches in the ugly color) lies Murray. These couches are too small for grown men; Alexei can feel tightness in his back muscles from his choice in sleeping locations. Murray had to have known the consequences and still he had chosen to risk a stiff neck that would bother him for days just so Alexei would feel safe.

All last night during their heart to heart talking about their shitty lives Alexei hadn't felt the urge to cry. He had thought he had gotten it out of his system in the first 10 minutes upon being reunited with the wild haired man outside his home last night. 

So its something of a surprise that this is what makes Alexei choke up.

As a little boy being teased for the way he talked he learned the hard way what happens when boys cry. Teasing words would quickly become bludgeoning fists. He stopped crying, hadn't cried no matter what horrible thing happened, no matter how scared he was.

Why is it then that he's been brought to tears twice in the last 24 hours? He never knew you could really cry from being too happy. He had assumed that was something they made up in movies, and yet here he is sniffling with a smile on his face on Murray's dirty floor thinking and believing that everything might just turn out okay.

**Author's Note:**

> I have spent way, way too much time writing this week. I guess this is my life now.
> 
> I'm strangely okay with it.


End file.
